Every so often, I wonder if I’m being too cynical about the entrepreneurship development industry. And then someone goes and reminds me that my cynicism is totally warranted.

Alex Becker is probably a really nice guy in real life, but this webinar was fuckin’ ridiculous, with all the clichés you would expect from a sales pitch in this industry. Let’s dive right in.

Helpfulness Rating: Asking Grandma for music recommendationsBullshit Rating: 5 Caribbean islands out of 5Sales Pitch Rating: Would rather go used car shopping on a Friday night

Initial Impressions

The first thing you need to know about Alex Becker is that he lives in the Cayman Islands. Unlike the rest of us plebeians, he’s a super successful entrepreneur who’s been able to escape to ‘the good life’. I know this because he fielded a totally real “question” from the audience before starting his webinar, from someone wanting to know what color socks he was wearing. His answer was that because it was so hot in the Cayman Islands, he didn’t have to wear socks anymore.

The second thing you need to know about Alex Becker is that he can show you how to quadruple your business without having to do anything difficult. See below:

No selling experience required? Sounds like magic. I can’t wait to become a wizard.

Becoming a Wizard

The crux of Alex’s webinar, and what he spent ten minutes talking about the importance of, was a hyped-up version of a basic business concept called “customer lifetime value”. It’s a term that Wikipedia says has been around since 1988, and is essentially the total value of a customer over the course of your entire relationship with them.

This means that if you’re Netflix, and the average person pays you $10/month for 12 months and then quits, you can spend $50 to snag them as a customer, and you still make $70 per person by the time they quit (on average).

Why we need an hour-long webinar to teach us something that Wikipedia and Grade 2 math could help us figure out in a couple of minutes is anybody’s guess. But wait – there’s more!

What’s being sold?

Alex’s company, MarketHero, has some kind of email automation tool that has the added bonus of tracking the customer’s lifetime value for you! On an unrelated note, I had a strong urge to go exfoliate my face with sandpaper, so I pursued that instead of watching the rest of his stupid sales pitch.

The bottom line is that aspiring entrepreneurs should weigh the cost of programs set up by guys like Alex versus a “Business 101” class at their local community college. The latter option is likely cheaper and way more informative.

Bonus: Startup Guru Clichés

It’s not rocket science to figure out what demographic this guy’s selling to. Not shown: Family Guy references, Top Gun reference, talking about how his business “prints money”, and many many typos.